Beyond The Muddied Sky
by Designated NPC
Summary: The tale of the last remaining WALL-E android, created as a garbage-man, who wound up being much, much more. In a Buy 'N' Large future seen through another lens, is it possible that this much-loved story still has worth? Chapter Two finally up!
1. 00 : History Of The Fall

A long time ago, there was a blue-and-green planet whose inhabitants called it Earth, and as planets go, it was lucky for a very long time - After all, how many worlds are capable of their own self-sustaining ecosystems? And Earth had hundreds of ecosystems, thousands of them, dizzying variations of flora and fauna preying on and living with and connected to each other. And, aside from one close call with a large piece of space-rock fairly early in its life, Earth was doing just fine for a surprisingly long while.

And then, around ten million years after the mantle had cooled and the oxygen had thinned some, a species arose that grew smarter and smarter, and began walking upright, and learned to protect their fragile bodies with hides and claws of the other animals around them. And they just kept getting smarter, kept adapting, until there were millions of them all over the world. A lot of them died, but there were always some who lived, and those who survived kept getting smarter and smarter, kept learning more and more, inventing things like arts and sciences and digital watches. In the process they named themselves "humans," and it was humans who gave the planet its name.

But although the humans were smart, there were some very obvious things they inevitably missed, which was probably due in part to how small an individuals human was, and how short a time they spent on their planet. The average human only knew the immediate world around them, the places they live in and work at, and even the longest-lived is only likely to reach their hundredth birthday. Perhaps this was why, although a few people here and there had thought to wonder about their planet's well-being, that preservation that never really seemed like a top priority. Humans were very short-sighted like that, operating under the cheerfully naive belief that the Earth would never tired from the pressures they put on it, that there'd never be a problem they themselves couldn't solve.

So of course, when that inevitable problem finally came, the world was taken completely by surprise.

At first the signs were small, and easily-missed; they had been occurring for years, little signals gone unnoticed in a sea of environmental noise. The seas were always changing, so who would notices a little spike in their salinity? So what if the weather was starting, at some times of the year, to get a little more erratic? Humanity was at the peak of its achievements, with no more wars to fight and certainly no shortages of life's amenities, thanks to the Buy 'N' Large Corporation. Everything that a person could want was available at their fingertips: Foods that tasted like sin but were nutritionally straight from heaven, tasty drinks to control your stress-levels and boost your metabolism, exercise regimes to keep you looking fit and trim that you could do while immersed in the latest virtual entertainment, burning those unsightly calories while dodging bullets, slaying dragons, or sailing the high seas. And to top it off, crime was almost unheard-of, because for the most part criminal acts have no place in a society where everyone's wants were already fulfilled, and for a minimum of a price!

Yes, maybe the world-wide production WAS shrinking, but it wasn't all THAT noticeable! It just meant a few less months to feed, and maybe a few less potential mates... But there too Science had you covered! There was always a major controversy over whether or not one should be allowed to marry their android, but if you wanted companionship and didn't mind one made out of metal, BnL had the premiere top-of-the-line android for you! Of course, they also manufactured a line for every possible need, but even those destined for menial tasks - janitors, perhaps, or delivery-making - were still so human-like as not to cause a stir. There had been simpler robots before, yes, but they had needed a certain level of awareness in order to do their jobs, and surveys showed that humans were disturbed by machines that seemed to think on their own. It took some time before the developers at BnL's Automated Task Force managed to come out on the other side of the Uncanny Valley, but at last they'd created an easily-reproduced model which was immediately dubbed an "android" for good press, and soon there were different moldings for each kind of task, ready and waiting to deliver service with a smile.

Soon enough, it was common to see more androids than humans on the street of your average city, and when the day came that the total number of androids surpassed the total number of humans left on Earth, that probably should have been a sign that something was going wrong. Of course, by then, Buy 'N' Large was already working on a different problem, a problem much more pressing than that of too many androids, and a problem - as it turned out - that would prove much more difficult to solve.

You see, the changes in the environment had finally become too big for Buy 'N' Large to ignore, if not exactly too big to hide from the public; while the happy consumers immersed themselves in BnL's super-immersive "Perfect Pleasure Vacation Package," all from the comforts of their own homes, Buy 'N' Large's top scientists worked frantically to reverse the effects that had lately grown too severe to ignore. Unfortunately, it had been too late for a while now, and those scientists were only just finding it out. The ocean has undergone immense salinization, to the point where you could pickled vegetables in it, if it weren't already muddied by toxic runoff; vast swaths of sea were barren and dead, clear even of the most hardy plankton, and those 'dead seas' were growing. The skies were now tinged a murky yellow, yet another reason to keep mankind's eyes from rising over the tallest skyscraper, and when it rained, the droplets left dirty streaks on anything it touched and caused itchy red rashes on human skin. And, when the tainted moisture was absorbed into the soil, it killed the plants who tried to drink from it; when the plants died and withered, the now-loose soil turned to dust and blew away, until 'farm-fresh' produce, which had already been a high-end treat, were no longer available at all. True, that's why people had pools and sky-domes and no-muss no-fuss Edibles Generators, but...

And then at last, as people the world over began complaining of tightness in their lungs, shortness of breath, and a bitter taste to the air, the BnL scientists were forced to admit that every scenario they had run had resulted in the same answer: The planet Earth was very, very sick, and they had no medicine with which to treat it. Living in a post-scarcity society might have meant a wonderful standard of living but it also meant people could afford to waste much, much more than they previously had, and the people did, and there just wasn't enough room to deal with the waste. Dumps overflowed, incinerators nearly melted down to belch ash and smoke into the sky, and in many places the garbage was simply left where they were. People didn't go outside these days anyway, right?

In the end, the result of a combination of these factors, and a lesson too long in coming, could not be denied. No matter how many brainstorming sessions took place in the hallowed halls of the Buy 'N' Large R&D division, no matter how much money the company's CEOs threw at the problem, it seemed that Mother Nature - long ignored - was not an opponent they could out-think or buy out. Earth was dying, and to even attempt to rehabilitate it would take a supreme effort... and an empty Earth.

So the R&D division, the best minds in the world, changed the direction of their research. They outlined a plan, a far-off and long-shot of a plan, but the production of the new robot went into gear almost the moment after the plans for the Waste Allocation Load Lifter * Earth-Class came off the drawing-board. (Well, the screen. Same difference.) Because of the need for urgency, they didn't have time to make an all-new body-mold or programming-skeleton, and in fact it wouldn't really be necessary; what they were making, after all, was a fleet of glorified garbage-men, so the developers cannibalized the designs of an earlier construction-type model, BOB v. 2 (Building and Ordinance Bot). BOB had been designed to work under human crew-chiefs, so it had more of a 'personality,' however pre-programmed, than it really needed... but there wasn't time to alter that, and there really wasn't the need. After all, it's not like there'd be humans around to notice.

At the same time, immense factories across the world went into production of the BnL starliner fleet, a massive engineering attempt to create thousands of arks in which to safeguard humanity. Thankfully, the slowing of mankind's reproductive capabilities were working in the favor of those who had to outfit their safe-houses; at an earlier time, the number of ships needed to transport even half of the collective population would be a near-impossible feat, even for such masters of mass-manufacturing as the Buy 'N' Large corporation. Each 'ark' was stocked with enough machinery to ensure a calm, pleasant flight for its occupants, for as long as the trip needed to be; and, while a human captain was chosen for each, there was also a machine in the co-pilot's seat as well. The AUTO-type autopilot had been designed expressly to man the massive starliners which were humanity's last hope, although to save time, the original plans for a physical android form were scrapped; instead the A.I. was wired directly into the ship's systems, and given a holographic projector to allow it to approximate a physical form. There was, of course, the option to turn the autopilot off, but that was included more because it wasn't important enough to change the basic plans - No-one really expected the autopilot NOT to be in use during the voyage.

And then, when everything was ready, the message was given to the world by none other than Shelby Forthright, the Buy 'N' Large CEO himself: The world was going to undergo Operation: Cleanup, and it would take only five years for the planet Earth to be back in tip-top shape! And, in the meantime, everyone would get an all-expense-paid vacation in one of the new luxury spaceliners that Bnl would helpfully provide, spending the five years of Operation: Cleanup on a vacation like none other! And then, when the the helpful little WALL-Es had tidied up the Earth, the spaceliners would return to a cleaned-up planet, ready to institute Operation: Recolonize and get things back to normal. No, even better than they'd been before!

Well, there really wasn't much of a choice after that, was there? Even the most oblivious person had noticed that the world outside his house didn't seem to be doing so well, so the population of Earth packed up their belongings and called up the newly-instituted spaceport hotlines to reserve their cabins aboardship. Everything was done nearly and orderly, with no sense of panic or worry, and those who proceeded up the huge gangplanks weren't particularly alarmed - After all, they'd be back in only a few years, right? It would be a nice, relaxing vacation 'til then.

In flights of twelve, the spaceliners lifted off their launch-platforms and rose into the skies, moving away from the planet which had turned brown under their feet. Space was big, but then, so were the spaceliners; so rather than having all of them remain in orbit, each ship took a pre-plotted course to the farther reaches of the solar-system and beyond. Besides, who would want to look down at that unpleasant spot of dingy planet? It would be much better to remember it as blue and green, and then to come back when it was blue and green again.

The last ship to leave was the greatest of them all, the BNL Axiom, and it was also the largest of the ships of the BNL fleet. Aboard this ship were the most important of the BNL staff, and of the governments, and the greatest minds the world had to offer: Artists and builders and doctors were there, as were the scientists who had tried to save the Earth, and who had now succeeded in - at least - preserving mankind. When the Axiom left the Earth behind, it left only a handful of stubborn humans who, for one reason or another, refused to leave; it left mountains and mountains of garbage, smothering the earth and blanketing the seas; and it left an army of WALL-E 'droids, moving stoically through the garbage-mountains and across the shifting seas, compacting the garbage into man-sized blocks and stacking them neatly, as their programming told them to do. After all, they only had five years to complete a clean-up that spanned the entire surface of the world.

Seven hundred years later, towering stacks of trash-cubes loom where skyscrapers once stood, and still the garbage of a million wasteful humans is scattered across the landscape for as far as the eye could see. The only eyes that see them, though, belongs to the sole remaining WALL-E unit left in active service, the only one that continues to follow its protocol even seven centuries after its creators fled the massive junk-pile they'd made. In and among the carefully-piled cubes this sole WALL-E winds, accompanied by a cheerful song even older than him, scavenged from amidst the trash-heaps and preserved to keep him company on his own hard drive. While some robots could be programmed to want companionship, the WALL-E unit - and the BOB unit it was based on - was not one of those models; on the other hand, seven hundred years alone would probably change a human, if they could live that long, and it certainly could change a robot, who is not limited by conventional life-spans. As long as sun, however sluggishly, continues to be collected by the battered flexible plates on his back, arms, and sides, WALL-E would continue to exist... and, it's not inconceivable to think, maybe he would have the chance to change.

Echoing across an empty, cluttered city, men and women long since forgotten sang of lights like stars and a world somewhere beyond, of girls in white gowns and boys with shine in their hair, a place where you could put on your Sunday clothes and go to town. Those words didn't really have a meaning for WALL-E, who didn't know half the words they were talking about and had no clothes besides the worn and threadbare mustard-yellow worksuit that all WALL-Es wore, but the music made him happy all the same. Android lips weren't really made to whistle, but he hums slightly off-tune in his throat as he flicks the muzzle of his 'gun,' little more than a complex metal tube, at a small mound of garbage and depresses the trigger. Bravo, gravity! The trash is compressed, within a few moments, into a tightly-packed cube of five feet by five feet, and another trigger turns the gravity-force into a suspension-beam, with which WALL-E levels the cube up, up, up, and onto the top tier of this latest tower he's building. WALL-E sets the cube down, wedges it in among the others, and lets it go; turning his attention back to the debris all around him, he selects a new clump of cast-offs and repeats the process, as he's done countless times since he was first activated, when there were still people on Earth and things were much less quiet and alone.

"Put On Your Sunday Clothes" comes to a flourishing finish, then begins again from the top as WALL-E dutifully continues performing his primary function. Strapped to his back is a makeshift backpack, roughly made out of the same mustard-colored cloth as the jumpsuit he wears, and the pack is mostly full with irregularly-shaped items, a large-ish rat perched on a square outcropping that almost protrudes entirely from the fabric. In contrast to the devastated world around them, the rat looked sleek and healthy, although dust caked its black fur brown just as it dulled WALL-E's synthetic skin and hair, the latter of which was once bright yellow but could now best be described as literally dirty blond. Otherwise at rest, the rat suddenly got to all fours, tiny claws gripping the backpack's material as a pointed nose lifted into the air and sniffed, whiskers taut. Not more than a few moments after, WALL-E glanced up as well, his atmospheric sensors feeding familiar readings into his mind.

With the latest-formed cube in place, WALL-E switched off his utili-gun and slung it over his shoulder, very carefully avoiding his little rodent friend, before turning to the south and taking off at a run. For such a battered android he made pretty good time, sprinting across the shifting ground-cover of trash towards home and safety, while at the northern edge of the city a cloud of high-velocity sand and grit came whirling in from the desert.

* * *

Author's Notes: This is basically a re-telling of WALL-E, just with human-like androids instead of the obviously-mechanical robots we see in the film, as part of a larger attempt to smooth out what I consider the "rough spots" of the film - logic-wise, I mean. I loved the film as much as anyone else, otherwise I wouldn't be putting time into this! =D Anyway, the way it's going now it'll follow the basic storyline of the movie, which means eventual WALL-E/EVE romance, and any other warnings I might have will be attended to as I reach them. Reviews will be muchly appreciated, whether or not you're signed in, so go for it!


	2. 01 : This Empty Earth

_When I first came online, I wasn't really any different from the other WALL-E units -_

_I don't remember much from back then, but I was able to review my memory-banks, later on. All I did was what I was built for._

_That changed, slowly. Even after a century of trying to figure it out, I couldn't pick out the exact point where it changed, but it did._

_Now I can't remember a time when I didn't have a Hal to keep me company, or when I didn't wind up hauling odds and ends back home._

_I can't remember a time when, even though I had Hal, I wasn't lonely._

* * *

The city of garbage was as still as death... But over the horizon, boots slipping on the piles of tossed-away wrappers and worn-only-once clothing, the last WALL-E android left emerged little by little from the towering piles of rubbish, his dust-caked form and mustard-yellow jumpsuit blending easily into his surroundings. The only thing that separated WALL-E from the litter around him was his movement, and as he crested a small hill of waste and skidded down the other side, his motivation came into view as well: Behind him, but gaining rapidly, was a swirling maelstrom of sulfur-yellow granules, sand and grit swept up from the outside wastelands and brought into the city's limits by momentous wind. As it passed over the ruined cityscape, the dust-storm sucked up mountains of litter at a time, only to spit it back out and re-scatted the garbage across the land; even as WALL-E raced for some kind of protective shelter, one of the mountainous garbage-towers wobbled in the hurricane-force winds and fell apart, the work of months, maybe years destroyed in a single moment.

WALL-E, of course, had bigger problems. Yes, he was programmed to clean up, but he could always re-compact and re-stack the cubes, assuming that he survived this latest dust-storm. However, in seven hundred years he'd lived through his share of dust storms, and although he was definitely not lacking in speed he didn't seem particularly perturbed by the force of nature he was currently fleeing. Even the rat clinging to WALL-E's backpack seemed to take this latest event in stride, his little claws digging into the mesh of the thick-weave fabric as he maintained his position with as much dignity as an ancient monarch astride the royal elephant.

Behind WALL-E, the sandstorm was gaining in fury... and in distance. Then, like salvation in the desert, the form of a chunky vehicle rose like a monolith in the wasteland of trash; it was the same dingy yellow as WALL-E's jumpsuit, and in roughly the same state of wear, its metallic hull pockmarked with countless dings and signs of hard use, but it hadn't caved in yet and to WALL-E, it was a welcome sight. He put on a final burst of speed, skidding so quickly over the garbage that Hal had to curl into a furry ball and half-bury himself inside the pack, the drawstring holding its mouth shut slowly being jogged open from the movement of its wearer. The rear hatch of the vehicle gaped open, and within its depths one could almost make out shelves and shelves of what looked like nothing much; WALL-E made a final dash up the metal ramp, slamming a palm on the red-blinking button just inside the open hatch. Almost too slowly, the ramp began lifting to seal the vehicle, its machinery rusting and old from centuries of pelting grit, but just as the first handfuls of sand began hurling themselves into the truck's interior, the ramp shut itself with a rumbling thud, sealing WALL-E and his rodent friend into the truck's interior, away from the destructive power of the dust-storm outside.

Hearing the roar of the storm outside, WALL-E slumped against the metal wall of the truck, seven inches thick and a sturdy steel barricade outside. His sensitive audio sensors picked up the faint scritchy skitterings of the rat as he scampered across the rugged metal floor; like Hal's eyes, adjusted by nature to low-light environment, WALL-E could make out the dim outlines of the vehicle's interior flashing across his optics. However, the WALL-Es had been manufactured to run entirely on solar power, which meant that they were made to operate only during the day; so, WALL-E functioned best in the same light-levels as humans did, which was why he flicked on the light-switch, just above the large red button that operated the rusted truck's ramp.

* * *

Above the shelves that lined the walls, strings and strings of ancient lights flickered on, bathing the interior of the vehicle in hues of light that ranged from red to blue. The lights had been found by WALL-E long ago, restored to working condition (once he'd figured out what they were for) and hung about hit 'home' to make it feel a little more... like his? The truck, after all, was just another piece of Buy 'N' Large equipment that had been left behind on Earth during the exodus, in much the same way that WALL-E himself had been left behind. Originally, the oversized vehicle, with its heavy tractor-like treads, had ferried other androids of the WALL-E model to and from the 'work sites,' which basically was the next sector of land where they hadn't yet compacted and stacked the piling garbage. Over time, however, as the other WALL-Es began to fail, they stopped returning to the truck, and WALL-E guessed that had happened all over the planet; he hadn't met any other working WALL-Es for over six hundred years, although he'd found other storage-trucks that had been abandoned just as long ago.

WALL-E was now the sole inhabitant, along with Hal, which was only the latest in a long line of 'pets' that WALL-E had acquired. It seemed that as each rat grew old and feeble and stopped moving, WALL-E would be able to find another friend, burying the deceased rodent in the hard dirt beside the truck. WALL-E thought that it was lucky, but then maybe they were just attracted to the BnL spongecakes that had been piled up next to the truck.

It was to one of those sponge-cakes, lying in a small heap in the corner, that the current Hal was moving steadily towards, nibbling a hole in the corner and tearing off the plastic with his claws. As the rat began to eat away at one end of the spongecake, still edible (more or less) after all this time, WALL-E stifled an electronic sigh as he slung his utili-gun off of his shoulder and propped it up against the closed ramp, before moving further into the "room." Along the revolving shelves, which lined the wall on each side, were stacked haphazard but neatly-sorted piles of WALL-E's salvaged treasures, and the lights overhead cast an almost magical glow over the junk, turning the scene into something special... but Hal was only a rat, even if he was WALL-E's only friend, and rats couldn't appreciate the effect of WALL-E's carefully-tended home. Although it was rusting with age, WALL-E had made a special effort to keep it neat, sanding away the rust and the edges and trying hard to make it feel like "home." WALL-E saw "home" a lot, on the vid-screens that even now activated whenever he came within range, and on one of them he'd discovered the use of those lights. It had been on a commercial that showed humans and a home that was covered in white stuff, and in and around the house had been strings of lights, like the one WALL-E had found. It had taken him a long time to find bulbs that were both intact and ready to function, but WALL-E had a long time to look for them.

* * *

Hal rapidly devoured the spongecake and its cream filling, as WALL-E set himself down on the far end of the cargo-space, folding his legs under him as he set down his backpack and emptied it before him. The results of his foraging spilled across the corrugated-metal floor, odds and ends that would probably have been ignored by anyone else, but WALL-E collected without reason or rhyme, picking up whatever caught his eyes and bringing it back here, to his little spot of life in the wasteland. A magnifying-glass that had miraculously escaped being cracked, a Rubix plastic cube of three-by-three colored squares, all mixed up, and a pocketful of round paper tabs rolled across the floor, accompanied by about three-dozen plastic blocks of varying colors and three little figures of human beings. One was a doll the size of WALL-E's hand, made of durable rubber, its fabric dress smudged with dirt; the other two figures were smaller and hard plastic, their glass eyes opening and closing whenever they were tilted or set upright. With one doll in each hand, WALL-E tilted the dolls back and then set them upright again, shuttering his eyes open and close as well; then, he set them aside, scooping up everything but the blacks and the dolls.

With his arms full, WALL-E walked past Hal and smiled at the rat, who was contentedly stuffing himself with a snack-cake that, by all rights, should have been radioactive by now. WALL-E approached one of the massive shelves, scanned it once, and didn't seem to see what he was looking for; juggling his items into his left arm, WALL-E managed to tap the palm-sized button set into the wall, which rotated the shelves horizontally and revealed the extent of the android's scavenging. Along with all manner of clothes and items, several bins were filled with what looked like a macabre assortment of body-parts, all of them extremely realistic except for the coiled wires that protruded from the "severed" ends. Had there been any humans left, or any factories, WALL-E wouldn't have had to resort to this, which would have seriously disturbed any human being; but, all of the assembly-lines which manufactured new parts for the WALL-E line, or for anything at all, had stopped working long ago, and even a robotic body couldn't last forever.

Fortunately, although WALL-E had definitely gained some human characteristics over the past few centuries, he had yet to develop squeamishness. Practicality, at least in this arena, still reigned.

* * *

At last, WALL-E found the shelf he wanted, and quickly busied himself placing his brand-new, if very very old, trophies with their similar brethren. Into a pile of twisted-metal puzzles and weathered, near-crumbling board-games went the multi-colored cube, and the magnifying-glass took its place among an assortment of glasses, lenses without any frames, and the clear glass screens of electronic devices that had long since been broken apart. The round paper tabs, for their part, joined a deep bin filled with poker chips and old coins, enough to have bought a large chunk of the continent that had once been called North America, if there was anyone around to do so. Or if there was anything in that mass of land that was worth buying.

His sorting done for now, WALL-E gave the revolving shelves a happy pat, then moved back across the floor of the cargo-hold; in his corner, Hal the rat was now curled up happily on his nest of spongecake wrappers, causing the plastic to crinkle as he squirmed around getting comfortable. WALL-E went back, in the meantime, to his latest project, something he had been working on for a while now, and which he had stored in the far side of the container because of just how precious it was. Tugging on a long rope-like harness of metal cording, the hold was filled with a soft, low rumble as the wheels on a large wooden platform squeakily turned, coasting into view covered by a large and irregularly-shaped tarpaulin. Closer inspection would see that the entire platform was roughly two-thirds the width of the available space, cobbled together from three different rolling platforms, as WALL-E carefully drew off the tarp and gathered it up in his arms.

There, sprawling across the floor of the truck, was a pieced-together imitation of the places that WALL-E saw in the perpetual commercials, especially those which lined the highways and the spaceport. Little houses and tall skyscrapers alternated in a way that would have made no sense to anyone who had actually lived in the old world, but which made perfect sense if the only way you'd seen those buildings was spliced together in a commercial made long ago. Little two-story ranch-houses were constructed out of tiny planes of wood, singed around the edges were WALL-E had burned them apart with his built-in laser, originally installed to destroy stubborn trash that just refused to be compacted. So long afterwards, though, there was little that hadn't become degraded-enough to be crushed eventually, so WALL-E put the laser to use like a high-tech jigsaw.

It was actually remarkable, what WALL-E had managed to do; the buildings even had little panes of glass for windows, and they were surrounded by bits of wood and debris that happened to be green. In and among these buildings were plastic trees and fabric flowers, and mis-matched human figurines that were once a child's toy, or in one case the little figures on top of someone's wedding-cake. While the dust-storm raged outside and the latest rat snuggled into his plastic bedding, WALL-E ever-so-carefully placed the largest of the doll against the skyscrapedr, which made it look ridiculously out of proportion but which seemed to make WALL-E happy. The other two dolls, somewhat capable of standing on their own, went into a patch of wooden trolley that had been painted green, designated by the look of things as the park, complete with regular designs of the plastic parsley that was standing in for trees.

* * *

Apparently satisfied with his masterpiece, WALL-E straightened up and dusted himself off again, a futile yet automatic effort to keep himself looking mostly-presentable, and leaned over to the jury-rigged screen that took up most of the southern wall. Tucked into this corner was a tiny mechanical wonder, a battery the size of a breadbox that ran on roughly the same solar energy as WALL-E himself. Plugged into that was a small, white, electronic handheld, wired to the larger flatscreen with cables that were already beginning to fray, but which - when WALL-E flicked the batteries to life - were adequate-enough to convey electricity to the handheld and the screen.

On the screen there appeared a picture, not without some static, but considering the age of the source material it was actually fantastically preserved; WALL-E had found the tape very long ago, not long after he had found the first Hal, and he'd been puzzled as to the purpose of the tape until he'd passed by a billboard advertising "vintage antiques." The tape, it seemed, was meant to go into some kind of tape-player, but although WALL-E had scoured his assigned cleaning areas, he'd found nothing of the kind - Perhaps 'antique' meant 'not made anymore'? Still, WALL-E was curious, so in the time after his job was done but before he shut down for the remainder of the cycle, he'd scanned whatever film was still readable into his own data-banks, and he'd cobbled together something to project what he found the way he'd seen on the billboard. Most of it was already degraded by the time he'd found its source, but...

As WALL-E watched, a happy expression on his face, humans began to file onto the screen, dressed in brightly-colored clothing and making music and moving around happily. WALL-E didn't know what that was called, but he understood that they did it because the humans were happy... and, sometimes, he'd try to mimic them, although his joints had been built for lifting and not for dancing. Hal would usually perch on one of the shelves, watching blankly, and WALL-E was never able to duplicate what the humans did, but he tried anyway. Someday, maybe, he might be able to move with such ease and grace, even though he was never meant to do so.

There were no such attempts today, however. The snow on the screen cleared, and a man and a woman were walking in a green area of trees and white sidewalk; this part of the recording skipped, having been watched so many times, and it was obvious that the little green path on the miniature landscape had been based off of the park in the recording. WALL-E smiled as the two humans sang, and if ever a robot could be said to look wistful, WALL-E did; this wasn't like the happiness from the first part of the recording, with all of the humans together, but this kind of happiness seemed... nice. The man and the woman sang to each other with smiles, and they held hands - This had puzzled WALL-E the first few times, and for a while he'd thought that they were disagreeing, or one of them was trying to pick the other up by the extension, but that had turned out to be wrong. They looked too smiling to be disagreeing, and physics didn't work that way either.

WALL-E had no words for it, but although this part of the recording made him smile, it also made him feel very strange... Hollow inside, maybe, although he knew that inside he was filled to the brim with gears and microboards. Turning brown-glass eyes from the screen to the miniature at his side, WALL-E looked down for several long moments at the two dolls standing on the green square, side-by-side, and facing the screen as though they were watching the couple move down that other, real tree-lined avenue. Then, carefully, very gently, WALL-E moved the figure that looked like a male human an inch or two closer to the female doll, so that it looked as though they were holding hands.

* * *

**Author's Notes:** I apologize if there are some rough spots in this one; writing during the holidays at my place is always risky, and we've been having pretty severe blackouts on top of that (making typing at a stretch hard), I may edit it later. Also, belated apologies for the formatting, but I'm having PC problems and had to do this in Notepad.


End file.
